Letters to the Editor
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It's the corporations, stupid.
FDR was a rich man who was not thoroughly evil and there's a reason you can't find a single one of those in politics today. It's the same reason why the Senate and Congress used to not be thoroughly corrupt, as well. The evil rich solidified their power through laws that made corporations into legal entities that made it possible for them to take over the country in less than a century.
The Republicans and the Democrats are owned by the same people. That's why the Democrats are "inexplicably" behaving the way they have been all year, giving the Republicans essentially anything they want. There is simply no other explanation that makes any sense.
There is no democracy. That ended in November 2000. It doesn't matter how much Americans evolve or how much they turn against the catastrophe that is everything this illegal administration has done.
We don't call the shots anymore. The candidates we vote for don't win their offices (at least when the election fraud machine isn't surprised by a 2006-like voter turnout), the things we overwhelmingly demand don't get done by the corporate puppets in office, and the shreiking right-wing corporate media continues to dominate our discourse even though it reflects the views of only a minority of Americans. The political action we need to turn back towards progress will never be allowed to happen under corporate rule.
As long as the corporations own the politicians from the top down -- or, as in the case of Cheney and many others, are the politicians themselves -- what we do, what we think, and what we want doesn't matter anymore.
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A Salon Quote About Corporations and Slavery
At least that's where I heard it, from commenter -- I'm Anonymous, Damnit! --
"If Slavery is the legal fiction that a person can be property, then corporate individualism is the legal fiction that property can be a person."
Of course the most ironic part of all this is that corporations were given inidvidual-entity, limited liability status as a stimulus tool to incentivise investment capital- and now corporate protections have made enough millionaires to obliterate the need for such an incentive mechanism.
You limit the liability of coroporations, and then wonder that they have no concern for the harm they cause in the name of profits? Grow up.
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@slackie...
as usual, a good post.
But consider this: the pendulum of affluence swings back and forth in this republic. why? Because the buccaneers who hold a lot of power in this society never give up, and never give in. The fascist wealthy in this society (and they've always existed, the Federalist Papers make that clear enough, as does the story of how our constitution came to be), really believe they should run everything and run roughshod over everyone who's not like them.
I'm talking about people like Richard Mellon Scaife (who, in any sane society, would have been marginalized long ago), and people like the Bush family, who are enabled by the Mellon Scaifes of this world. There are too many of these people, they have way too much money, and hearts full of delusion, greed, and bile.
It has been ever thus, unfortunately.
Certain impersonal forces are at work as well. Human beings love to find the loopholes in everything. they love to cheat for their own benefit. It *feels good* to make out at the expense of your fellow man. This is our biology, and our fate.
We may beat back the buccaneers for a time. But with every generation, and new pack of them shows up, ready to slaughter, metaphorically or actually, all who stand in their way.
It is a foolishness that could be short-circuited forever if enough human beings actually gained some wisdom. But I am not holding my breath for that. It hasn't happened in 10-thousand years of so-called civilization. I don't anticipate a change on that score.
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The War Party is Alive and Well
We've gone from the Neocons to the Neolibs ...
The Neolibs will leave a few more crumbs on the table , that's about it.
As far as the Military Industrial Congressional Complex goes , it heading forward with full steam. These so called liberals Won't get out of Iraq , will spend More money for a Bigger military, and continue Free Trade neoliberal economic policies that will fatten Wall Street wallets at the expense of the people in both countries.
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Ah, Yes,
Andrew Leonard surveys the vast expanse of the economic, social and political expanse of the 20th Century and lands upon . . . Willie Horton. The liberals' favorite, favored torturer.
THAT may be all you need to know about why we've lost elections in the past, and may still lose them in the future. How very succinct.
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Survey says!
Got a survey of what Blacks think about interracial anything?
-as compared to caucasians, yellows and other colors.
Betcha it seems more racist. Lack of education is still a big problem in getting that chip off of any racists' shoulders.
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Yellows?
People with jaundice are a race?
wow...who knew...
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Ah, No
"Andrew Leonard surveys the vast expanse of the economic, social and political expanse of the 20th Century and lands upon . . . Willie Horton."
Boy, that is a very odd reading of his essay. Take a throwaway line and try to turn it into the main point. Strange.
"Got a survey of what Blacks think about interracial anything?
-as compared to caucasians, yellows and other colors."
Interracial "anything"? Whatever that means. Well, if you are really interested in finding out you could look it up. It shouldn't be that hard.
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Phoenix Woman
What's truly remarkable about the Chicago School of Economics is not that it ignores decades of well-established economic knowledge and public policy, but that that knowledge and policy is what makes capitalism work. So their attack on Keynes is also an attack on capitalism itself. Strange but true.
Marx taught us that capitalism's big problem is overproduction, i.e. the inability of a capitalist economy to consume what it produces. This results in rising inventories, falling prices and falling wages. Falling wages mean less consumption and further rising inventories, falling prices and wages in a continuing spiral downward. That's precisely what happened in the Great Depression which not surprisingly followed the decade of the greatest productivity increases in U.S. history. The New Deal brought government into the equation. By taxing income (particularly progressively) and by both direct and indirect government employment, New Deal economics transfers wealth from the few wealthy to the many poor and middle class. Because the wealthy tend to save and the poor and middle class tend to consume, the system ameliorates the problem Marx pointed out. It enhances consumption.
Therefore, tax cuts for the wealthy are not only unconscionable as gifts to those who don't need them, but they're bad economics. They result in greater income disparity between rich and poor which is also bad economics.
So what we're seeing over the last 30 years or so is an attack by the wealthy on the system that made them wealthy. That's not only morally wrong, it's sick.